I pulled Ramel’s head into my lap, laying him on his side so as not to disturb the two arrows lodged in his back. He rolled his eyes up to meet mine before reaching forward to gently touch my face with his inky fingers.
“Leave me,” he rasped. “Go back to Hell. Shem—” he coughed bloody ink onto my lap. “Shemhazai will take care of you.”
“I’mnotfucking leaving you. I just got you back!” I sobbed. Tears streamed down my face and splashed across his cheek as they fell.
He gave me a brave attempt at a smirk and let out a wet, rattling breath.
“You’ll be alright without me, deathtrap,” he said, his voice low and full of regret. He ran his thumb over my lips tenderly. “At least this way, I won’t be able to hurt you anymore.”
The words tore through me so violently that, for a moment, I wondered ifIhad been shot.
My hands trembled as I ran my fingers through his hair.
“Don’t you fucking say that to me!” I snarled. “You promised me forever.”
He took another deep, slow breath and closed his eyes. The way his lashes fluttered terrified me. It was as if it took too much energy for him to keep them open, and he was preparing to close them for the last time. To my relief, he opened them and met my gaze, his beautiful eyes cutting straight through to my soul as he continued to caress the side of my cheek.
“And you will have me forever, Lilith, even if you can’t feel me with you.” He slid his hand into my hair and wrapped his fingers around the back of my head, pulling me down to crush his lips against mine.
“I will never stop loving you, even if there’s nothing left of me for you to love back.”
“Please,”I begged him, my voice barely a whisper. “Please don’t leave me. Everyone always leaves me…”
I sobbed, and Ramel’s eyes fluttered again.
“I’ll always be with you, deathtrap. I couldn’t leave you, even if I tried.”
His hand fell away from my face, and his eyes didn’t open again. He released one last, rattling breath, and whatever it was that made him Ramel slipped away—and no matter how hard I begged—I couldn’t convince his soul to stay.
Alexa, play ‘Little Girl Gone,’ by Chinchilla
“I am the storm.”
—OLIVIA CRAIN, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
Clink, grind, whrrrlll.
Silence stretched out in the aftermath of Ramel’s death; only the soundof Yahweh’s Sorter of Souls interrupted the echoing quiet.
I sat, staring at my dead husband, unable to accept the reality of what had just happened. Finally, Yahweh began to clap.
“Encore, encore. What a show you’ve put on for us,” Yahweh drawled. I stared down at Ramel’s lifeless face and felt myself shake with grief and rage.
They had won…
I could feel my magic now coursing through me. I had the power to eviscerate them. I had begged Ramel not to kill Yahweh, and now I was paying the consequences. I looked up and allowed my magic to continue to flow through me, but I froze as I found Art pointing another golden arrow directly at my head.
What would happen if I was struck? I was a goddess… Could the arrow kill me as easily as a demon?
“Get her back on the cross,” Yahweh ordered, and his few remaining angels moved to grab me. Yahweh and Art crept closer to me, the Sorter of Souls clinkingand grinding relentlessly behind them. The sound was pushing my barely controlled rage dangerously close to its breaking point.
They were dead. They were all fucking dead.
I eyed the arrow Art had trained on me warily, my mind racing. I needed a distraction. I needed to take them out before they could inhibit my magic again, but how?
The two angels flanked me and grabbed my arms, dragging me away from Ramel’s body. I screamed in rage and let my rot seep from my body, forcing it up and into their hands, but Art snarled.
“Rot them, and I’ll put this arrow through your skull, Lilith,” he threatened, and I screeched at him, black decay seeping through my feet and staining the clouds beneath me.
